USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Centennial history of Cincinnati and representative citizens, Vol. I, Pt. 1 > Part 6
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grounds extended and any one who entered upon them did so at the peril of his life.
The Indians that occupied the Western and Middle States two hundred years ago belonged chiefly to two great families, the Iroquois and the Algonquins. In the Ohio Valley, while the influence of the first named nation was very great and its title to the land a matter of much subsequent discussion, the natives with whom the settlers in the main came into contact, be- longed to the Algonquin family. The Iroquois at one time or another extended their conquests from Canada to the Carolinas and from the At- lantic to the Mississippi, and although not pres- ent in large numbers in the Ohio Valley, their quasi-sovereignty was to some extent recognized by all the other tribes .. They are supposed in some measure to owe their triumphs to their home within the central part of the State of New York, where the great rivers and the lakes large and small, offered opportunities for roving throughout the lands adjacent to them. They consisted of five tribes or nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, the Cayugas and the Sen- ecas, to whom, in 1714, were joined the Tus- caroras, after which the Five Nations became known as the Six Nations. Each of these tribes had a separate organization with their sachems and chiefs, but all matters of foreign policy were deliberated upon and decided in the general as- sembly in a great council house in the Onondaga Valley. By reason of their clannish system, as a result of which the same clan had branches in all of the families of the confederacy, they formed a very united body and their system of descent through the female line, constantly
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transferring the power of the sachem to the collateral branches of his family, prevented any one family from obtaining too great a power or influence among them. In the Algonquin fam- ily, the descent was through the male line.
The Five Nations from time to time swept the country, practically exterminating their enemies. Their process of extermination was complete. A large number of their captives were destroyed by the most horrible torture at the stake, and the remaining ones were distributed among the different tribes of the conquerors, husbands and wives and parents and children being entirely separated so that the family identity was com- pletely lost. In this way the losscs of the con- querors in battle were repaired and the unsuc- cessful opposing nation was wiped out of ex- istence.
No more terrible story has ever been written than that of the destruction by the Iroquois of the Hurons and the Tobacco Nation, among whom were so many of the Jesuit missionaries, who suffered martyrdom at this time. The Hurons (Iroquois) occupied the peninsula be- tween Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, but be- fore the middle of the seventeenth century they were wiped out of existence as a nation and ceased to exist. Some took refuge among the French in Canada, others fled to the north be- yond Lake Superior, from which place they were afterwards, about 1680, driven to Detroit, where along the southwestern shore of Lake Erie and along the banks of the Maumee, they were known to the later settlers under the name of the Wyandots. Thesc Indians, the survivors of the Hurons and of the so-called Tobacco Na- tion, took an active part on the side of the French in the French and Indian War, and they were among the most formidable enemies of the English in the Indian war under Pontiac.
To the south of Lake Erie dwelt two other members of the Iroquois family. The Andastes were along the valley of the lower Susquehanna, and the Eries or Cats were on the borders of the lake which still retains their name. As soon as the war with the Hurons was over, the Five Nations picked a quarrel with the Eries, who at that time had a treaty of peace with them. A deputation of their principal men liad been sent to the great Seneca town to confirm this treaty, but in the quarrel one of the Senecas was killed. In the melee that followed, the thirty deputies were slain. This precipitated hostilities in the course of which the Eries captured a famous Onondaga chief. As he was about to
be burnt he was successful in convincing his cap- tors that the policy of conciliation was a wise one and they resolved to turn him over to the sister of one of the murdered deputies, to take the place of her lost brother. Under the Indian law this gave her the privilege either to adopt him or burn him, and it was thought that she, although absent, would upon her return imme- diately accept him as a meniber of her family ; to the surprise of all, however, she demanded revenge and insisted upon his being burnt. With his last breath he warned his tormentors that they were not destroying him alone but the whole Erie nation. As a result of this execution the whole Iroquois confederacy was aroused and the Five Nations, to a number of twelve hun- dred warriors, took the field.
They advanced over the lake in canoes and drove the Eries into the forests of the West, where the defenders built themselves a fortifica- tion of trees. The demand of the Iroquois that they should surrender was received with de- rision and their assault with poisoncd arrows. In the second attack the bark canoes were car- ried over their heads like shields and upon ar- riving at the palisades they were planted upright and used as scaling ladders. The fury of the assault was such as to throw the Eries into a panic and when the day was ended the Erie nation had ceased to exist. The victors were obliged to spend two months in the Erie region, burying their own dcad and nursing the wounded.
The Iroquois then turned their arms against the sole remaining cnemy of their own race, the Andastes. This nation was inferior in number to their three previous antagonists. They were able, however, to postpone their destruction for a much longer time. The war at first was a series of skirmishes, in which the Mohawks took the principal part on the part of the Iroquois. In 1662, however, the Five Nations as a body took up the quarrel, and eight hundred warriors set out to inflict a decisive blow upon their ene- mies. Which they came to the Andastes town they found it was fortified by a double palisade with bastions and was set with several small picces of cannon which they had received from their neighboring Swedish friends. An assault was out of the question and treachery was tried. Their envoys, however, were tortured to death by fire in the sight of their countrymen and the assailants retired in confusion. Added to this disappointment came the ravages of smallpox, which swept over the Seneca nation with ter-
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rible results. The repeated skirmishes, although terminating in many instances in favor of the Andastes, were so weakening their numbers that in 1675 they were reduced to less than three hundred fighting men and became the easy vic- tims of the Senecas. This victory left the Iro- quois the undisputed masters of the surround- ing country. They had clearly established a Roman peace and the neighboring Algonquin tribes were allowed to exist upon condition of the payment of yearly tributes of wampum. As a result of these many wars, the force of the Five Nations in 1660, we are told, had been re- duced to twenty-two hundred warriors, of whom not more than twelve hundred were of the true Iroquois stock, while the rest were made up of the prisoners adopted from the conquered tribes of Hurons, Neutrals and Eries and other nations that had been practically extinguished.
At Onondaga seven different nations were represented, and among the Senecas no less than eleven. In 1714 and 1715, however, a kindred nation of Tuscaroras came from the south and joined the Five Nations, being admitted as the sixth member of the confederacy.
For a time the lands to the south and west of the lakes were practically unoccupied except as the hunting grounds of the all conquering Iro- quois. From time to time great hunting parties launched their canoes upon the head waters of the rivers, coming with the flood tides of the spring and fall, and others came by way of the lakes. They scattered through the forest and went up and down the rivers of the Kanawha, Muskingum, Scioto, Kentucky, the Miamis and the Wabash. There were none to oppose them and after their departure, silence and desolation marked the places of their camp fires and tem- porary villages. As the more easterly lands were given over to settlements to the French and English, the Iroquois found that their at- tention was more frequently called to Quebec and to Albany, the lands of the North and West and of the far West, and gradually other nations drifted in to the abandoned hunting grounds north of the Ohio River.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the country now known as Ohio was distributed in a way among the following nations. That part about the Muskingum and along the upper Ohio and Allegheny was occupied by the Min- goes, who were wanderers and outlaws of the Five Nations, chiefly Senecas and Cayugas. The Wyandots who had scated themselves about Dc- troit had sent large bodies along the Sandusky
River and as far as the Scioto, and at the time of the tour of Christopher Gist (1750), their chief village was on the Tuscarawas, near its junction with the Wallionding. Near the Ohio and along the Muskingum and Scioto were the_ Shawanees with their chief town at both sides of the Ohio at the mouth of the Scioto. To the west, extending from the Wabash to the two Miamis, were certain tribes of the Miamis, known as Twightwees (Tawightis) and the Piankeshaws and Weas (Ouiatanons). Their principal fort and town at the time of Gist's visit was Pickawillany. Among the Mingoes and Shawanees and Wyandots were scattered the Del- awares.
Shortly after Gist's tour, the Wyandots with- drew entirely from Muskingum, leaving the ter- ritory to the Delawares and the Shawances. In the same way they spread into the upper valley of the Scioto and to the plains between its head waters and those of the Little Miami. The Dela- yares, as they were called by the English, the Lenni-Lenape, or original men, as they were called by themselves, were said by tradition to be the parent stock of the Algonquin tribe. At all solemn councils they were called by the title of grandfather, and they called the other Algon- quins, children, grandchildren, nephews or younger brothers. The Wyandots and the Five Nations, however, they called uncles, who in turn called them cousins. The legendary history of these Indians is probably the most romantic that relates to the Indian tribes. They are sup- posed at one time to have lived west of the Mississippi, and it is this nation which with the Iroquois are supposed to have driven out the mound builders whose mounds and forts still remain in the valleys of the different Ohio rivers. After this conquest, the Iroquois went to the North, so tradition states, and the Lenni-Lenape settled in the valley of the Delaware from which they took their name. Here they settled down to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, and when William Penn held his council with their sachems, they had degenerated, from the Indian stand- point, to a state of vassalage to the Five Nations. They were then called "Women" and were not allowed the use of arms. `When they came to sell their lands to the Dutch, the Iroquois repu- diated the transaction, insisting that they had no rights in the land, and they were forced to leave their fields and fall back into the Allegheny forest, from which they finally drifted to the up- per Muskingum, where they settled about 1740. During the old French War, they became more
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vigorous and while the Six Nations fought for the English they took up the cause of the French. They fought later against armies of Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, and finally after the bat- tles of Fallen Timbers and Tippecanoe, they were driven with the rest of the tribes to the westward.
"On the Kansas River and its tributaries, the remnant of the once powerful Lenni-Lenape range to-day over a territory of a million acres, still dreaming, it is said, of a time when they will again assume their historic position at the head of the Indian family. A great mass of tra- dition lives with them of their Eastern conquest, the homes on the Delaware, Allegheny and Mus- kingum, where the poet had Evangeline visit them in her search for Gabriel. And still the massacre of Gnadenhütten is told to wondering children in Delaware wigwams, which dot the Ozark Mountains, as they once dotted the Alle- ghany valleys." (Hulbert.)
Adjacent to the Delawares lived the Shawa- nces, Shawanoes or Shawanese, Chouanons of the French, the Bedouins of the American In- dians. "The Shawanese were the only Amer- ican Indians who had even so much as a tradition of having come to this continent from across the ocean. Like that of the savage Wyandots, the history of the Shawanese before they settled down on the swift Scioto is a cheerless tale. Too proud to join one of the great Southern confed- cracies, if indeed the opportunity was ever ex- tended to them, they sifted northward through the forests from Florida until they settled be- tween the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. Here the carliest geographers found them and classified them as the connecting branch between the Algonquins of New England and the far Northwest, so different were they from their Southern neighbors. They remained but a short time by the Cumberland, for the Iroquois swept down upon them with a fury never exceeded by the Cherokees or the Mobilians and the fugitives scattered like leaves eastward towards the Alle- ghanies. By permission of the government of Pennsylvania, seventy families, perhaps three hundred souls, settled down upon the Susque- hanna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. By 1730, the number of Indian warriors in Penn- sylvania was placed at seven hundred, one-half of whom were said to be Shawanese; this would indicate a total population of perhaps fifteen hun- dred Shawanesc. With the approach of the set- tlements of the white man and the opening of the bloody French and Indian War, they left the.
Susquehanna and pushed straight westward to the Scioto River valley, beyond the Ohio. The Shawanese have well been called the 'Bedouins of the American Indians.' The main body of the nation migrated from Florida to the Cum- berland and Susquehanna and Scioto rivers. Fragmentary portions of the nation wandered elsewhere. Cadwallader Cobden said in 1745, that one tribe of the Shawanese had gone quite down to New Spain.' When La Salle wished guides from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico in 1684, Shawancse were supplied him, it being as remarkable that there were Shawanese so far North (though they may have been prisoners among the Iroquois) as it was that they were acquainted with the Gulf of Mexico. In the Black Forest, the Shawanese gained another and well earned reputation-of being the fiercest and most uncompromising Indian nation with which the white man ever dealt. They were for the half century while the Black Forest was their home and the Wyandots their allies, ever first for war and last for peace. Under their two terrible well known chieftains, Cornstalk and Tecumseh, they were allied both with the French and with the British in the vain attempt to hold back the tide of civilization from the river valleys of the Central West. Missionary work among them proved a failure. They make treaties but to break them. Not an acre of all the land which lay south of them, Kentucky, but was drenched by blood they spilt. Incited by such hell-hounds as the Girty boys, there was no limit to which the Shawanese could not be pushed and for it all they had been trained by instinct and tradi- tion through numberless years of desperate ill fortune." (Hulbert.)
It was these three nations, the Shawanees, Delawares and Wyandots with their center of population on the Scioto, Muskigum and San- dusky Rivers respectively, and the fierce Miamis with whom the early settlers of Ohio had to cope and their wars were the longest and most sticcessful ever waged by the red race in the his- tory of the continent. They defied the white man for half a century, "triumphing terribly at Brad- dock's defeat and St. Clair's, the greatest vic- tories over the white man ever achieved by the red."
The Miamis or Twightwees, who formerly lived on the Mauince and Wabash, as well as the Illinois, were never subjugated by the Five Nations, although their numerous wars weakened them very seriously. They were very fierce in battle and very much given to wandering among
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the prairies and forests, but they paid some at- tention to' agriculture and the building of per- manent dwellings, and at seasons of the year their whole population gathered for merry mak- ing and celebrations within their villages. The principal village of the Miamis, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Pickawillany, was visited by many pioneers and is described in the ac- counts of the expedition of Celoron and Gist.
In theory the tribes just described had been admitted to this region with the consent of the Five Nations, who by right of conquest claimed the entire control of this territory. The victories of the Iroquois already related were supposed to have made them masters over all the country north of the Ohio and as far west as the Missis- sippi. This matter became important in the subsequent claims which the different European powers put forward as to the country out of which Ohio was formed. The steady growth of French feeling and French population in this region finally attracted the attention of the Eng- lish cabinet and it became necessary to invent some sort of a theory upon which England could lay claim to this land. By the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the Five Nations had been recognized by France as subjects of Great Britain, and of course all their lands were supposed therefore to belong to that country. Sir William Johnson and. Gov- ernor Pownall therefore shrewdly advanced the proposition of the conquest by the Five Nations of the Western lands referred to, which proposi- tion if correct would naturally vest the title of these lands in England. This proposition was not however conceded by the Indians, not even by the Mingoes, who were the off-shoot of the Five Nations. It was claimed by the tribes that the land was theirs not by permission of the Five Nations, whose conquest was disputed. The two distinguished Englishmen already referred to, as well as Dr. Franklin and others, regarded the rights of the Five Nations to all the hunting grounds of the Ohio Valley "as thoroughly es- tablished by their conquest in subdueing the Shawances, Delawares, Twightwees, Miamis and Illinois, as they stood possessed thereof at the peace of Ryswick in 1697." On the other hand such authorities as General Harrison and Dr. Drake and many others disputed entirely such a proposition, and General Harrison sub- sequently gave us his conclusion, after reviewing the proof, that without any reasonable doubt "the pretensions of the Five Nations to a con- quest of the country from the Scioto to the Miss- issippi are entirely groundless."
General Harrison supposed that the Miamis had been in immemorial possession, from the Wa- bash to the Scioto where he found them, and it was upon this supposition that he based his theory. It seems to be the fact, however, that there had been a conquest extending to the Mississippi, but at the end of the seventeenth century a combination of the Miamis, Shawanees and other nations of the Northwest incited by La Salle and his lieutenant, Tonti, had driven the Iroquois back to their original lands. La Salle had been permitted by his allies to build a fort on the Illinois, in the winter of 1682 and 1683, and the Indians had used this as a rallying place. This aroused the indignation of the Iro- quois and during the absence of La Salle in France in March, 1684, the Iroquois attacked the fort and besieged it for six days. They were unsuccessful, however, although they made three assaults, and finally withdrew, carrying with them a large number of prisoners. They were pursued by the Miamis and their confederates, the Illinois, and most of the prisoners were re- gained. This was the first serious rebuff that the Iroquois received and they never again went so far west. The Miamis and the Shawanees and other tribes gradually worked, their way eastward until peace was made at the great con- vention of Indians at Montreal in 1701. From this time as a matter of fact the Five Nations lost their control of the country west of the Mus- kingum and their claim of title by conquest and the claim of the English depending upon it were mere fictions. The Miamis in the meantime had moved into Ohio and settled at the points where they were subsequently found by Celoron.
INDIAN CHIEFTAINS.
The most famous chief of the Miamis was Little Turtle (Me-che-cun-na-qua). He had been educated in a Jesuit school in Canada and was remarkable for his mental vigor and great common sense as well as for his skill and.bravery as a military leader. He commanded the Indians at the time of the expeditions of Generals Har- mar and St. Clair in 1790 and 1791 and was also present in the fight at Fallen Timbers at the time of the Wayne expedition in 1794 but was not in command. He is supposed to have urged the Indians not to go into action at this time but to accept the proposition for peace. "We have beaten the enemy twice; we cannot expect al- ways to do this. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The day and the
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niglit are alike to him. I advise peace." He was among the chiefs that signed the treaty at Greenville and took a most prominent part in the proceedings, which he opened on behalf of the Indians. His text was to the effect thiat the treaty of Fort Harmar was not a valid treaty as it had been made by some of the younger men of the tribes who were irresponsible. He resented the carving out of the Indian territory by the English and Americans without any con- sideration for the Indians and gave the former boundaries of his tribe as follows: "The prints of my ancestors' houses are everywhere to be seen in this portion. *
. * ** It is well known by all my brothers present, that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit; from thence he extended his lines to the head waters of Scioto; from thence to its mouth; from thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash; and from
thence to Chicago on Lake Michigan. * * * I have now informed you of the boundaries of the Miami Nation where the Great Spirit placed my forefather a long time ago, and charged him not to sell, or part with his lands, but to pre- serve them for his posterity. This charge has been handed down to me." ( Burnet's Notes, p. 222.)
The French explorers found that this state- ment was practically correct as traces of the Miami were found on the territory mentioned and not elsewhere. They had probably been at one time identified with the Illinois, the enemies of the Iroquois from time immemorial. Those that were in Ohio were divided into three tribes,- the Miamis who occupied the neighborhood of the Maumee or Omni, the Piankeshaws between the Wabash and the Miami rivers and the Twightwees still farther to the south along the head waters of the Miamis. It was a tribe of the Twightwees sometimes called the Pickawilla- nies, who established a village on the Great Miami in 1748, which was visited by Celoron and Gist and where was the first English fort and station established in this neighborhood.
Any one who follows the discussion at the · great council at Greenville cannot fail to be im- pressed by the eloquence of the Indians particu- larly by that of Little Turtle, who certainly as far as the mere presentation of facts was con- cerned was fully the equal of Wayne. He finally with the other chiefs signed the treaty and is said to have adhered to it ever after. He visited President Washington at Philadelphia in 1797 where he was made much of. Kosciuszko then visiting the United States admired him very
much and presented him with a pair of hand- some pistols which he told him to use in defense of his country. He met Volney the celebrated French philosopher and became quite intimate with hin. Volney in conversation with him con- cerning the origin of the Indians suggested that they had come from the Tartars in Asia, to which Little Turtle responded, "Why may not the Tar- tars of Asia have come from the Indians in Amer- ica?" Volney constructed a vocabulary of the Indian tongue from the information received from his Indian friend.
E. D. Mansfield the well known chronicler of the pioneer times saw him at his father's house in 1805 or 1806. His father Col. Jared Mans- field then the surveyor-general was living at the time in the large two story dwelling, the best looking and largest house then in the purchase built by Colonel Ludlow at Ludlow's Station. One of the wings was used as the surveyor-gen- eral's office. Colonel Mansfield at that time had charge of the running of the lines provided for in the treaty at Greenville. His son narrates the visit of Little Turtle as follows :
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